Warsaw On The Thames.(World Affairs)(Poles in the United Kingdom)

Byline: William Underhill; With Jessica Au in London

Poles are heading to Great Britain and Ireland in unprecedented numbers. Politicians are close behind.

It's campaign season in Poland, with a closely fought national election this month. So why was opposition leader Donald Tusk planning a quick visit last weekend to London and Dublin? "It's simple," says M.P. Krzysztof Lisek, of Tusk's Civic Platform party. "There are more than 1 million young Poles in Britain and Ireland, and we hope they're still thinking about what's happening in their own country."

For a footloose generation of Poles, home increasingly means Britain or Ireland. In the three years since Poland joined the EU, millions of Poles have joined a westward exodus, with these two countries as clear favorites. By some reckonings, Ireland now plays host to 200,000 Polish ex-pats -- equivalent to 5 percent of the population -- while Britain accommodates at least 700,000. By contrast, Spain (population: 40 million), another leading magnet for Poles, has pulled in a mere 150,000. France has been issuing barely 10,000 work permits to Polish citizens. While the mass influx of Eastern Europeans has stirred controversy across Western Europe, it is largely a move of Poles to the British Isles, where they are reshaping culture from politics to schools, media to pub life.

Behind this new Polish connection: Britain and Ireland's warm invitation. When Poland and nine other countries joined the EU in 2004, current members were given the right to delay opening their labor markets to job seekers from the East. Big countries like France and Germany kept their doors shut. But Britain and Ireland threw them wide open, perhaps not quite realizing what they had done. Government experts predicted just 13,000 migrants would come in annually from the new member states. Some from every country took the bait. Others stayed put. Slovenia's economy was strong. Hungarians have little tradition of emigration. Czechs and Slovaks tended to look for jobs closer to home. But tens of thousands of Latvians and Lithuanians moved across the continent. And Poles responded in record numbers, creating the largest in-migrations in recent British history.

With a population of 39 million, Poland is by far the largest of the new EU members, and it also has a tradition of migration. Facing double-digit unemployment back home, Poles were drawn to Britain and Ireland by strong job prospects in two of Europe's top-performing economies, by the chance to learn English and by budget airlines that slashed the cost of travel. British ...